The issue of apathy returns me to the subject of Bob Dylan. Now, I've written about
Bob Dylan shows before. (Seeing Dylan and/or Divine
Revelation, Nov. 2001) Sometimes he cares, and sometimes he seems not to.
This week's show was a little alarming: in the wake of all the good press, he
seems to have returned to his troubling predilection for sprechgesang and ignoring
the emotional tone of his best songs. Casualties tonight: It's
Alright Ma, Shelter from the Storm, High Water. All tossed off, half-spoken.
It's not that Dylan can't hit the high notes - he does on the new album, and did
tonight on The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (another timely choice, given its emphasis on class and injustice; quite apropos for the age of Enron the Uninvestigated). Does he just not care? Or is it all about The Show - lyrics be damned? Does he think he sounds good when he doesn't really sing? I want to believe that this is his way of improvising, of making the songs new each time he sings them. When the sentiment is similar to the original (as in Hattie Carroll), he sings it straight. When it doesn't -- well, what we're paying for is actual authenticity, not feigned authenticity. In the context of silver-spooned liars trying to seem like "honest folk," maybe all the affectation of the showman/conman is itself a bid for maximal honesty.
Masters of War sounded great tonight, sounded heartfelt. But I wondered how many people in the audience agreed with it, or knew what it said, and how many applauded simply because they recognized it, or remembered fondly their old opposition to Vietnam. Our current war is an obvious example of the "Masters" in action, running the military-industrial complex from behind desks. Of course this time only Iraqis will die, and who cares about them. I got the sense that a lot of the audience there - Dylan audiences are always weird, part meathead, part ex-hippie, part random yuppie, and a few kids - was feeling ambivalent.
The election's most important consequences were never on the minds of most of the voters. The federal judiciary, for example. I've clerked on federal court - I've seen how ideology does determine cases. Like in the pork checkoff. Or how certain judges are predisposed against discrimination claimants, or victims of police brutality, and how the same judges seem not to care much for civil liberties. And now these judges will be all over the judiciary, for life. Roe v. Wade is in serious jeopardy; privacy is gone. Think of the drug war, Superfund, the Kyoto Protocol. Or basic standards of labor being in play during trade negotiations, or telecommunications mergers, or investigating corporate crime (how about starting with Halliburton). Or enforcing campaign finance laws, or equal rights for gays and lesbians, or allowing different cultures to express themselves without government-sponsored marginalization. Or health care for everybody, rational gun restrictions, saving endangered species.
And yet, well - they bought it.
Maybe a hard rain is gonna fall; wealth inequality is now at levels worse
than the 1980s and worse even than the 1920s. Maybe we'll get to that 'boiling point' that radicals who don't vote use
as an excuse.
But it doesn't seem like most folks are getting angrier. On the contrary, the few
control the many by means of a conglomerate-produced consumerism that keeps Americans fat (literally as well as figuratively) and pacified. Having stolen an election which they lost by half a million votes, the party of the rich has now won one fair and square, the old fashioned way: by lyin' to the people. So while I hope that the shit will hit the fan, I don't think it really will. There'll always be another pretext-war, another Value Meal at McDonald's. People will get distracted.
I think I'll join them. Distraction is more fun than attention, and about as useful. And limited in opportunity -- pretty soon having sex with my boyfriend will be illegal,
and smoking a joint will be monitored by Ashcroft & Ridge. It used to be that Lou Reed's nihilism --
I really don't care anymore,
about all the jim-jims in this town,
and the politicians making crazy sounds,
and everybody puttin' everybody else down -
felt like a cop-out, and the young Dylan's idealism was the path of the right-thinking citizen.
That was when political engagement mattered, when the lies of Madison Avenue didn't lead to a house
on Pennsylvania. Well, things have changed.
For the Left's voice to be heard, it needs to play by the rules
November, 2002
Overheard in Union Square, September 11, 2002
October, 2002
Consuming September 11
September, 2002
The most evil and deceitful administration in American history
August, 2002
America's shallow globalization strategy
July, 2002
Avoiding the obvious Jewish responses to the mideast crisis: a response
to Jay Michaelson
June, 2002
It's a lonely world when you're both an anti-globalization leftist and a
Zionist.
May, 2002
The rich are ripping us off! What are you gonna do about it?
April, 2002
A WEF Protester Tells You Why He Bothers
March, 2002
Zeek interviews the man behind generations of world despots
February, 2002
The best guarantor of democracy is a vibrant, oppositional counterculture.
January, 2002
Channel your rage at the people responsible for September 11 -- and I
don't mean the cavemen in Afghanistan.
December, 2001
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